Voices on Disruption: Jeanne Handojo

My department is all about services. I’m in charge of housing, custodial services, the mail center, food services, telecommunications, transportation, all the copiers on campus, water delivery, basically all the daily operations. This year, I will have worked on Fuller’s Pasadena campus for 30 years, and I’ve been attached to the city for that long. When my husband was a student, we even lived on Ford Place right next to campus for many years. We still live close now, so I go home for lunch—I’m just six minutes away!

Since 2008, my department has had a hard time—we’ve been cut, cut, cut. In custodial services, we’re down from three full-time employees to two; in the mail center, we’re down from four employees to three. In auxiliary services, we are also down from two employees to one. Our custodians used to clean the buildings every day, and now it’s reduced to only once a week for the offices. There aren’t as many students on campus as there used to be, and things are slowing down. I’ve heard from Lalo, who provides food service, that not as many people are coming to the refectory. It’s scary! I’m sure other departments are experiencing similar things, and we’re all functioning with minimum resources.

I haven’t been to Pomona yet, but I do have lots of questions. What will we do about mail rooms? What will we do about housing? Will it be affordable? What about food services—are we going to have a refectory? Will we have housing for international students? Who will clean the new building? Will this give us a chance to update our systems and build the building we want?

It’s going to be hard for me, but I know it’s a necessary move in order to stabilize and balance the budgets. We’ll see how it goes!